Switzerland in World War II

Occasional Papers

This section of the Document Repository contains the American Swiss Foundation's publications of "Occasional Papers" on issues of the day. These documents are available in an on-line format and are also presented in various downloadable document files here.

From the cover of Time to front pages across the country, Switzerland has been the defendant in an American media trial. The tiny nation, a noncombatant in World War II, has been accused by Senator D'Amato and others of collusion with Nazi Germany.

For too long the American picture of Switzerland has been the "Heidi" picture. Switzerland’s cheese and chocolate image has now proved detrimental to Switzerland, for it has hidden the more serious-and truer-image of Switzerland as the democracy on the European continent most similar to America in its core values and institutions.

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A fascinating and enlightening explanation of the dilemma Switzerland found itself in during the 1930's and 1940's.

Halbrook vigorously and, inevitably, controversially argues a conservative defense agenda with his thesis that Switzerland's federal system, which lacks a central authority capable of surrendering the country, and its militia-based defense (shades of the Minutemen, the Second Amendment, and the NRA!) effectively enabled Swiss neutrality during World War II. He offers much evidence that the Swiss armed and equipped themselves at considerable cost to defend their independence, for which most of them were prepared to fight even against the might of the Wehrmacht. Whatever the range of Swiss sympathies was, and however much the necessary bribes to the Third Reich may have benefited the Axis, the Swiss deterred the Germans, remained neutral, and thereby benefited the Allies--and the many thousand refugees allowed into Switzerland--far more. Whether the Swiss would have offered a last-ditch resistance in the face of the full range of German terror tactics remains an open question, of course, but Halbrook suggests that the question of Swiss "complicity" with the Third Reich should also remain open. Roland Green